Off-page SEO

Driving awareness and links for organic success with digital PR and off-page SEO.

"It’s great working with the Varn team on creative campaigns that get results for Paper Bag Co. We increased our link coverage and rankings consistently over the long term."

Jon Marling

Paper Bag Co Founder

paperbag-logo

What is off-page search engine optimisation?

Off-page SEO is about building your digital footprint through a tactical approach that improves your ability to rank in search engines. This requires a strategy to build quality links to your website and optimise search rankings for your business. Off-page SEO covers links, brand mentions, and content, and Varn is an agency with extensive experience in off-page SEO and digital PR.

If technical SEO is the engine, then the off-page SEO is the fuel to get you ahead of the competition. One of the core elements of off-page SEO is links to your website. This is where another website has linked to your website. Google uses these links as indicators of votes, which represent the quality of a website and this makes links one of the core ranking factors in the Google algorithm.

Do you need help with off-page seo and link building?

Let's talk

How can Varn help with your off-page SEO?

Building up a solid external profile of good quality links referencing your site is beneficial in improving your organic search rankings. Our off-page SEO team will create and optimise brand-building awareness & activity on external sites that contain references to your site. This consists of looking at backlink activity on external sites, such as links to your publications, press releases or research. Ideally these will have links directly to your site, with relevant anchor text. All this will help you appear in both traditional search engines and AI chatbots.

Digital PR is also a key tactic we will use to drive awareness and links for your campaigns. We will work alongside you to optimise and promote your current content, exploring opportunities with relevant publications and new touchpoints, to engage potential audiences with your brand messaging. This often involves unique and creative ways of getting high quality links back to your website.

Varn provides an expert off-page SEO team who will explore and uncover opportunities which will have the biggest impact for your business, providing support in obtaining further high quality backlinks.

Contact our team

Some of our Off-page SEO tactics

Our expert team specialises in delivering a range of off-page SEO services designed to boost your website’s authority and visibility. From strategic product outreach and creating linkable content to securing guest article placements, we craft bespoke strategies that drive high-quality backlinks and amplify your online presence for long-term search success.
logo

Link placements

Flip

Link placements

Earning backlinks from a wide variety of relevant sources is crucial for SEO. Using our SEO expertise, we help websites and bloggers optimise their website and as part of the process, earn backlinks for our clients. This is great for targeted outreach to specific landing pages.
Flip
logo

AI citation optimisation

Flip

AI citation optimisation

Wondering how to appear in ChatGPT and AI Overviews in Google? We can help you earn coverage in the third-party content that is being cited by AI, this drives coverage in both traditional search and the new AI LLMs.
Flip
logo

Digital PR

Flip

Digital PR

A data-led digital PR campaign looks at the trends in your industry to create a story. This can be done through the creation of first-party data, or the telling of a story through third-party data online and we reach out to bloggers and journalists to pitch content.
Flip
logo

Thought leadership

Flip

Thought leadership

One of the core tactics for outreach is posting thought-leading articles. This is where we find websites in your sector niche that accept guest content and pitch editorial to them. Within editorial we can include links back to your website that deliver both brand and SEO benefits.
Flip
logo

Competitor analysis

Flip

Competitor analysis

As part of our competitor analysis, we look at backlink profiles and common links that they may be getting that you are not. We develop strategies and plans based on the context of those links to earn placements on the top websites for your business.
Flip
logo

Linkable content

Flip

Linkable content

Earning high-quality backlinks isn’t just about outreach, it starts with creating valuable, engaging content that others naturally want to link to. Linkable content is designed to attract attention, providing unique insights, data, or resources that industry publications, bloggers and websites find useful. We will create compelling content strategies that position your brand as an authoritative source.
Flip

Our results

AI correctly predicts gold prices for 2024

With our client BullionVault we leveraged AI to predict the future of gold and other precious metal prices over 2024. The results were staggering with correct predictions made in a record year for gold. With the content created, we started to push out to publications in the finance industry that had covered similar topics in the past earning features in Finbold, Financial News and Jewelry Monthly. We then evolved the content into a longer-form piece for 2025 that also targeted wider ‘gold price forecast terms’. By combining digital PR with linkable content, we have driven over 75 links for BullionVault and supported increases in traffic and rankings.

Off-page SEO success for Paper Bag Co

Paper Bag Co is the UK’s largest supplier of eco-friendly and sustainable e-commerce and wider business packaging. Paper bags are one of their core offerings, so in 2022 and 2023, we helped them to develop the ‘Festival Bag‘ – a bag for festival goers and camping enthusiasts with everything you need to have the perfect sustainable festival experience. We assisted through the product development process and once created, started to send out the bags to journalists and bloggers who would be interested in covering.

The key goal was to keep them in the top 2 positions for the competitive search term ‘paper bags’ which we achieved. Some of the best link coverage included a write-up from Sustainable Packaging News, a dedicated feature on BoomTown Fair’s website as well as 30 links across festival blogger websites like Where’s My Tent.

Find out more

Off-page SEO results for Woolacombe Bay

Woolacombe Bay are one of the largest holiday park providers in the South West of England. In early 2023 we ran a campaign looking at some of the best-reviewed beaches in Devon ranked by the total number of 5-star reviews on Tripadvisor. The goal was to support their rankings broadly but also to increase their positions for the high-volume terms ‘holiday parks’ and ‘caravan parks’.

After the curation of the data and the outreach, we were able to attain coverage in Devon Live, Birmingham Live and the Sun in addition to numerous mentions in local blogs and smaller regional publications. Their ranking for the term ‘caravan parks’ went from 45th to 8th (on the first page of Google) and has had a very positive effect on their organic traffic with the target landing page seeing a 308% rise in ranking keywords prior to and after the campaign.

Find out more
Tob, Thomas and David
Tom and Jess from Varn
varn-bristol-seo-team
technical-seo-expertise
presentation-of-varn-health
varn-stand-up-paddle-boards

Off-page SEO is important because search engines consider factors beyond your website’s content and structure when ranking it. Links are one of the key factors in Google and other search engines’ algorithms and can enhance your website’s credibility, increase its visibility in search results and ultimately drive more organic traffic.

Yes, guest blogging can still be effective if done right. Focus on providing high-quality, informative content to relevant websites in your industry. Guest blogging should not be solely for link building; it should also aim to establish your expertise and build relationships.

Track metrics like organic search traffic, the number of quality backlinks earned, social media engagement, and improvements in search engine rankings for targeted keywords. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and third-party SEO tools can help with measurement.

Yes, the number of links can matter in SEO, but it’s important to emphasise that quality and relevance are far more crucial than sheer quantity. In the past, the number of backlinks was considered a significant factor in determining a website’s authority and ranking potential. However, as algorithms have gotten more sophisticated, a focus on quality over quantity has come in for SEO agencies.

AI is changing the game for off-page SEO and you can no longer rely solely on a high number of backlinks. Engaging in wider off-page SEO activities and driving coverage in listicles, earning mentions through digital PR and engaging with your community is becoming paramount to appearing in all of the major AI models.

Latest SEO insights from our experts

AI & innovation 09.07.25

How to make sure you’re visible in AI search
 Read more
Tom Vaughton

Article by:

Tom Vaughton

AI & innovation, Crawling & Indexing 08.07.25

Cloudflare changed the rules for AI: What it means for your website
 Read more
Greg Martinez

Article by:

Greg Martinez

AI & innovation 07.07.25

How to stay ahead with Varn's AI Visibility Frameworks: An interview with Head of Innovation, Aimee Talbot
 Read more
Vicky Walker

Article by:

Vicky Walker

cta-background cta-background

Get in touch with our expert off-page SEO team

Let's talk

Sign up for the latest SEO news & insights straight to your inbox